So, everything considered, he was overwhelmingly relieved when one of the shadow shapes lasted long enough for him to come up to it, though it filled his whole field of view-even if it was the darkest, gloomiest, most forbidding castle he had ever set eyes on, made of black granite and dripping with rivulets of moisture. As he came up to it, the fog seemed to lift, becoming a lowering sky instead of an environment in its own right. Off to his left he saw a brackish, turgid lake that extended a pseudopod to feed the castle’s moat. Looking down, Matt saw dark water with a greenish tinge-the first color he had seen in this alien environment. Now that he thought of it, he glanced down at his own parti-colored clothing, but instead of brilliant red and blue and yellow, it all seemed to be just different shades of gray, with only a hint of hue.
Anxiety touched him-this dampness had to be bad for his lute! He had to get it indoors, preferably near a roaring fire-if this strange pocket universe had fire… He looked down at the moat again and thought he saw lumps in it. If he did, they were moving. He looked away with a shudder, thinking that he would have preferred to see teeth and glowing eyes. But the drawbridge was down, the portcullis drawn up, and never mind if its spikes did look like fangs, if the doorway itself reminded him of a hungry mouth, he took a step onto the tongue-no, that was a drawbridge-and another step, and another, until he was nearly at the doorway.
A scrabbling and a thump, and a troll popped up from beneath the drawbridge, fangs guttering in its watermelon-slice mouth. Fingers with talons of steel reached for Matt. He backed up, but heard a splashing behind him, with a thrashing and thumping as something aquatic was climbing up onto the bridge, while two more trolls climbed up behind the first one, gibbering with insane glee, and two sea serpents reared their heads up from either side of the drawbridge, mouths yawning wide as they came toward him. All he could think was that whoever owned the castle had really overdone it. The fear was remote, not even pressing-this couldn’t be real, it was just too much. “Fooood,” said the smallest troll, the one only seven feet tall. ‘Toll!“ the foremost troll demanded. ”One arm!“
‘Toll!“ the second echoed. ”One leg!“
Matt cried,
The trolls howled in surprise and anger, and the sea serpents hooted in rage-but they disappeared, fading into the mists, and whatever was behind Matt gave a honk like an eighteen-wheeler in dire distress, but it only managed two more approaching thumps before its voice seemed to dwindle like a spray of mist. Matt turned quickly, but was only in time to get a vague impression of a bloated, elongated shape with lots of teeth in its tail-as well as all the hundred or so in front-before it, too, was gone.
Matt just stood there blinking for a minute. He had expected the spell to do some good, but not this much! Maybe to knock the monsters back for a minute or two, to give him time to figure out a plan of action-or even to have sent them all running away. But to just fade? As if they’d been made out of the mist itself? Illusions. They had to have been illusions, mere illusions and nothing more. No wonder he’d felt that the lord of the castle had been overdoing it!
He strode into the castle a bit more confidently-if all he had to worry about were illusions, he was perfectly safe. On the other hand, he’d been trying to banish his own illusions for a dozen years now and hadn’t had too much success. Of course, these were somebody else’s illusions… He stepped in under the portcullis, but it didn’t crash down on him at the last second, and no giggling microcephalic giant tried to bisect him with an axe. There wasn’t even a huge and horrible black hound from Hell pouncing on him with a howl. It made him very nervous. He ran through the entrance tunnel, then, very cautiously, he stepped through the archway at the end. Still no terrors attacked him.
He looked about him and found he wasn’t in a courtyard, as he had expected, but actually inside the castle proper-the great hall, in fact. There weren’t any windows, but there were torches in sconces along the walls, sending up trails of greasy smoke-and, at the far end, a dais with a canopy. But it looked old, almost rotted; if it hadn’t been for the torches, Matt would have thought he was in an abandoned ruin. Suddenly, twinkling lights glimmered on the dais and in the center of the room. Matt braced himself as the light turned into a coruscation, clouds of sparks that pulled together and settled and became… Gorgons.
Matt didn’t turn to stone, but he almost wished he had-they had snakes for hair, and their mouths opened into grins with fangs. Lamias joined them, and harpies, and something rustled and chirruped above his head. It was almost as if he had confronted the male monsters outside and the female monsters inside-except for the half-dozen old men with yellowed beards and obscenely carved staffs, who cackled and discussed him with gloating grins, then pointed at him all together and shouted, “Destroy him!”
With a shout of delight, the lamias and the gorgons charged, and whatever it was that was chirruping swooped. Matt dodged, just in time for a huge black widow spider to swing through the space where he’d just been and slam into the charging mob of monsters. They screeched, and the giant spider emitted a shrill blast of sound that sent the gorgons’ snakes stiff and made them clap their hands to their ears. It gave Matt time enough to sort them out.
The monsters all screamed, the spider loudest of all. Matt clapped his hands over his ears as he repeated the verse again, and louder, just for good measure. The monsters blew apart in showers of sparks, showers that faded, except for all the scrawny old men. They turned to Matt, pointing at him and shouting something in that blasted archaic language that he didn’t understand. He suddenly found himself sinking; the floor had become quicksand and was sucking him down-or was that himself melting from the feet up? He looked down, decided he was melting, and sang,
The pack of wizened men flung up their arms and started chanting, but Matt beat them to the punch line.